Incorporate multi-sensory and multiple intelligence styles of teaching, to provide opportunities for success and balance for all students.

Create a school atmosphere in which healthy emotional developed is fostered, and where qualities of courteous treatment, compassion, patience and understanding will flourish.

Build a strong community-family-school partnership with meaningful opportunities for involvement.

Assess student progress in ways that reflect the whole of a child’s learning while meeting educational and testing requirements.

In public education, you frequently hear the term multiple intelligences referring to how children learn and the different approaches you have to take to meet the learning styles of the child. In Waldorf education the rich environment we create directly addresses the concept of multiple intelligences and helps to give to each student the support they need in a rich art infused environment where they can learn and grow to meet their highest potential.

A Waldorf inspired education– A balance of head, heart and hands; or of thinking, feeling, and doing.

The curriculum reflects developmental rhythms and the child’s changing consciousness through the grades.

Strong community-family-school partnership in support of the children.

Multiculturalism incorporated into the social aspects of learning to help young children keep an open mind and gain a deeper understanding of other cultures.

Educational Approach and Distinctive Teaching Techniques

Through looping, the class teacher works with each child through a multi year relationship.

Rhythm of the day is organized to balance thinking, feeling, and doing.

Core academic subjects are taught in block periods.

Textbooks are not used in the lower grades. (Teachers add their artistic creativity to curriculum resources to enliven the presentation of the subject.) Children create their own individual books for each subject.

Science is taught on an empirical basis leading to conclusion of laws and formulas.

Music is introduced in the first grade with the recorder leading to other instruments, choir, and orchestra in the higher grades.

Video produced by Waldorf School of the Peninsula - www.Waldorfpeninsula.org (posted with permission)

The best overall statement on what is unique about Waldorf education is to be found in the stated goals of the schooling: “to produce individuals who are able, in and of themselves, to impart meaning to their lives”.

The aim of Waldorf schooling is to educate the whole child, “head, heart and hands”. The curriculum is as broad as time will allow, and balances academics subjects with artistic and practical activities.

Waldorf teachers are dedicated to creating a genuine love of learning within each child. By freely using arts and activities in the service of teaching academics, an internal motivation to learn is developed in the students, doing away with the need for competitive testing and grading.

The Waldorf methods follow children’s developmental rhythm; kindergarten experience emphasizes a good deal of cultivation of pre-academic skills, and minimal academics in first grade. Reading is not taught until second or third grade, though the letters are introduced carefully in first and second.

During the elementary school years (grades 1-8) the students have a class (or “main lesson”) teacher who stays with the same class for (ideally) the entire eight years of elementary school.

Art Integration – Certain activities which are often considered “frills” at mainstream schools are central at Waldorf schools: art, music, gardening, and foreign languages, to name a few. In the younger grades, all subjects are introduced through artistic mediums, because the children respond better to this medium than to dry lecturing and rote learning. All children learn to play recorder and to knit.

There are no “textbooks” as such in the first through fifth grades. All children have “main lesson books”, which are their own workbooks which they fill in during the course of the year. They essentially produce their own “textbooks” which record their experiences and what they’ve learned. Upper grades use textbooks to supplement their main lesson work.

Learning in a Waldorf school is a non-competitive activity. There are no grades given at the elementary level; the teacher writes a detailed evaluation of the child at the end of each school year.

The use of electronic media, particularly television, by young children is strongly discouraged in Waldorf schools.

The main reason is that Waldorf schools honor and protect the wonder of childhood. Every effort is expended to make Waldorf schools safe, secure and nurturing environments for the children, and to protect their childhoods from harmful influences from the broader society.

Secondly, Waldorf education has a consistent philosophy of child development underlying the curriculum. All subjects are introduced in age-appropriate fashion.

Finally, Waldorf schools produce graduates who are academically advantaged with respect to their public school counterparts, and who consistently gain admission to top universities.

Waldorf education incorporates the oral tradition, typically beginning with the teacher telling the children fairy tales throughout kindergarten and first grade. The oral approach is used all through Waldorf education: mastery of oral communication is seen as being integral to all learning.

Writing will be taught before reading. During the first grade year the children explore how our alphabet came about, discovering, as the ancients did, how each letter’s form evolved out of a pictograph. Writing thus evolves out of the children’s art, and their ability to read likewise evolves as a natural and, indeed, comparatively effortless stage of their mastery of language.

The reasons for this have as much to do with the physical effects of the medium on the developing child as with the (to say the least) questionable content of much of the programming. Electronic media are believed by Waldorf teachers to seriously hamper the development of the child’s imagination – a faculty which is believed to be central to the healthy development of the individual. Computer use by young children is also discouraged.

Waldorf teachers are not, by the way, alone in this belief. Several books have been written in recent years expressing concern with the effect of television on young children. See, for instance, “Endangered Minds” by Jane Healy, “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television” by Jerry Mander, or “The Plug-In Drug” by Marie Winn.

Ideally, class Teachers will have both a university degree and teaching certification from a recognized Waldorf teacher training college or institute. Typically, the course of study for teachers is from two to three years and includes practice teaching in a Waldorf school under the supervision of experienced Waldorf teachers. Teachers must also be either licensed or registered through TSPC and satisfy the requirements for “highly qualified teachers” by the state of Oregon. If a teacher is not Waldorf certified, he/she will be taking training to learn to apply the Waldorf methods in a public school setting.

Between the ages of seven and fourteen, children learn best through acceptance and emulation of authority, just as in their earlier years they learned through imitation. In elementary school, particularly in the lower grades, the child is just beginning to expand his or her experience beyond home and family. The class becomes a type of “family” as well, with its own authority figure — the teacher — in a role analogous to parent.

With this approach, the students and teachers come to know each other very well, and the teacher is able to find over the years the best ways of helping individual children in their schooling. The class teacher also becomes like an additional family member for most of the families in his/her class.

It’s worth noting that this approach was the norm in the days of the “little red schoolhouse”.

Generally, transitions to public schools, when they are anticipated, are not problematical. The most common transition is from an eight grade Waldorf school to a more traditional high school, and, from all reports, usually takes place without significant difficulties.

Transitions in the lower grades, particularly between the first and fourth grades, can potentially be more of a problem, because of the significant differences in the pacing of the various curriculums. A second grader from a traditional school will be further ahead in reading in comparison with a Waldorf-schooled second grader; however, the Waldorf-schooled child will be ahead in arithmetic.